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26750. arkymalarky - 2/1/2012 5:18:16 AM I agree with you 3i. I hate online drama. Or any drama, for that matter. There are plenty of good online places to play now, but I have long-time true friends here and I get tired of the same old rehash elsewhere. I read tpm or huffpo comments some, have posted a bit, and see some familiar people. But it's not new or very deep discussion, mostly people talking past each other, and I'm more focused on issues, especially wrt education, irl. I dislike education forums generally, which is too bad. They don'thave much substance to them, mostly impractical trendy meta crap. 26751. iiibbb - 2/1/2012 5:50:04 AM I suppose I mean stay ahead of him such that I can keep his energy going in constructive ways. 26752. arkymalarky - 2/1/2012 6:53:16 AM Oh you will! Y'all are going to have a blast for years. 26753. arkymalarky - 2/3/2012 3:38:13 AM Y'all ginna get storms Judith? Went home with a migraine--only my second this year--and clouds rolled in and it was gone. Rhank goodness, but I hope I don't have to drive in storms tomorrow.
Oh, and did you see the meteorite? 26754. Wombat - 2/3/2012 6:16:10 PM Wombette is now 4 for 4 will college acceptances. Only 2 more to hear from. How we will afford it.... 26755. judithathome - 2/3/2012 8:26:19 PM Congrats, Wombat!
No meteorite sighting and just a few sprinkles over here...looks like it might have rained again this morning...I slept 'til 11 and just looked out to see that it has indeed rained a little... 26756. arkymalarky - 2/4/2012 4:36:24 AM Yay Wombat! 26757. arkymalarky - 2/11/2012 11:53:37 PM They put up signs along my commute. All these years I've been driving on the Trail of Tears route and never knew it. 26758. bhelpuri - 2/13/2012 6:33:32 AM Congratulations on the college stage, Wombo.
I on the other hand am shoulder deep (literally) in small-to-large boys, and there is no relief in sight. 26759. bhelpuri - 2/13/2012 6:38:43 AM If Uncle Pelle would deign to catch up here, it would be nice. The same with the rest of you lot - maybe we can even re-energize for a battle or two?!
Where are Irving, Phillipp, the two Pseudos? Surely not lost forever? 26760. arkymalarky - 2/13/2012 7:26:59 AM Don't know about any of them, but I'd love to see a good back and forth. Go to a thread and say something provoking bhel! 26761. judithathome - 2/13/2012 3:47:19 PM Pelle has an energetic forum over at Able Minds... 26762. arkymalarky - 2/13/2012 5:10:50 PM I was going to sign up there but don't want to get a paypal account and haven't got around to sending a check. I have a big break this weekend and will try to remember to do it then. 26763. arkymalarky - 2/13/2012 5:11:37 PM Gotten... 26764. vonKreedon - 2/13/2012 6:37:09 PM Hey Bhel - Take a position, I'll work on taking the contrary position. 26765. judithathome - 2/13/2012 9:53:42 PM I let Pelle knw he was wanted over here! 26766. iiibbb - 2/13/2012 10:18:41 PM I feel bad for a guy at work. He is talking himself out of a job. I was hired to get a handle on a complicated analysis, of which he has spent the better part of the past couple of years collecting data for. Although he does not have the skill set to really tackle the problem, he thinks he does. He also feels a strong ownership of the data. However, he's been sitting on some of it for over a year without even doing summary statistics because he's completely fixated on all of the "problems" they had while collecting it; problems that in the grand scheme of things aren't going away.
I started a few weeks ago, and have already started to make a lot of headway in breaking the problem apart. I figured out a different way to segment the data that helps negate how the problems affect the analysis.
Needless to say this guy is very threatened by my arrival. He doesn't have much good to say about any of my proposals for addressing the data... but literally says things like "I don't know what you're doing, but it's wrong"... or when I ask him about the units for one column says something like "I don't know what that is, but it's not going to be useful to you". This is not the mind of a person who's prepared to deal with complicated data.
26767. iiibbb - 2/13/2012 10:18:49 PM
He's very negative. He's obsessed about what's wrong with things and declares a lot of effort to be a waste of time. Rarely is effort a waste of time. Data is messy. You can't throw it out because something is messy; you have to find a way to make it useful to you.
Another thing he does his concern himself too much with things that aren't his concern. He pesters his/my boss about how funds are allocated for instance (i.e. he actually gave the boss a hard time because he was paying him out of a different fund than the project he was working under - a paycheck is a paycheck).
Anyway. I found out he's probably going to lose his job next summer and I feel bad for him. He's a conscientious guy, it's a tough economy. He wants to be a part of certain aspects of the science/analysis, but he's so territorial I don't know how to collaborate with him. He wants to be in the loop for every step --- I have to work through a process and bring people into the loop when I get to a plateau and can discuss problems more holistically. He can't seem to grock that.
Unfortunately, this is a soft money position, he's also a downer and complainer, and he's rejected roles that the organization has tried to give him.
It's made work a little strange because at the moment I rely on him to give me data I need --- but he's made the working relationship so tense I don't want to because he holds the process back.
I am liking my job though. I think my boss and I really click, and I hope I can make something more of this position because I am soft-money too -- but if I can get on some grants within the next 2 years, my time can be extended. That or I kick ass and my boss realizes just how indispensable I can be (my wife, P, the statistician, said that she thinks my skills are in the upper 10% for non-statisticians). I do feel I'm living up to the generous reference letters that were written about me. 26768. judithathome - 2/14/2012 3:05:59 AM It's all fine and good to feel for the guy but you need to watch out for yourself...he's doing that for HIMSELF, after all. 26769. iiibbb - 2/14/2012 3:21:57 AM I am.
He doesn't have a PhD; I do. While I wouldn't throw that in his face, the fact remains that I am qualified and he is not.
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